Thanks to All Things Considered interviewing Allie Brosh I have discovered the blog “Hyperbole and a Half“. Allie Brosh has a book out, too, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened.

Depression is not a topic that’s commonly or usually helpfully discussed. It’s difficult enough to talk about with close friends who know you well, but trying to explain it to others? who don’t have it? Forget it. Partially difficult because when I’m in the midst of it I don’t have the energy to describe it in a balanced way (that isn’t overly morbid and negative or too flippant and dismissive) and when I’m not depressed it’s difficult to inhabit/ re-create the subtle worldview and unique logic/ experience/ knowledge of depression enough to describe in order to explain it. Also difficult because while it is a “thing” (something that one feels, knows, experiences and therefore exists) it is a negation, so how do you describe what isn’t there in a way people who haven’t experienced it can understand? And not scare them away? Or have them thinking ‘if she’s talking about it this carelessly she can’t really be depressed’?

I cannot express how elated I was to read Allie’s post Depression Part Two, to read someone saying “I don’t necessarily want to kill myself… I just want to be dead somehow” (elated in a I’m-not-alone-oh-my-god-someone-nailed-it-on-the-head sort of way). And the questions of how to socially appropriately broach this topic and not freak out loved ones? Not something you really read about. But she writes about it wonderfully and illustrates it superbly.

Here is something I’ve been thinking about lately: There are a couple common responses (to the statement “I’ve been depressed”) that are not helpful or supportive though people who say them feel they are being helpful or supportive. When I screw up the courage to let someone know I’m depressed (even to friends and family) it *actually makes things worse* when you reply with plucky aphorisms and go get ’em suggestions… because to a person in the midst of a depression they’re inane and as useful as a bicycle is to a dead fish. As Brosh put it, those “hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.”

Examples of Not Helpful Responses: “Why are you depressed, you have your health and people that love you and…”, or, “Plenty of people have it worse than you…”, or, “Don’t worry, this too shall pass/ It won’t last forever”, or, “Why don’t you go outside and get some fresh air/ Go to the gym–get those endorphins going”.

<– These do not help. These are in response to what you think you know about depression, but not actually what depression is, and therefore inappropriate, not useful, and possibly (probably) hurtful and may well alienate the person who has just screwed up a bunch of courage and energy to confide in you and you just blew it off or seemed to blow your nose in it.

These solutions/ suggestions are not answers to the problem of depression. And they deny the experience of depression and the challenges and pain it brings. Which makes the suggestions more harmful than helpful.

from Allie Brosh’s blog post “Depression Part Two”

Brosh likens it (this situation of having depression, and when you tell others they respond uselessly as mentioned above) to “having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.”

“The problem might not even have a solution,” Brosh writes in her post (emphasis mine, here and below). “…you aren’t necessarily looking for solutions. You’re maybe just looking for someone to say ‘sorry about how dead your fish are’ or ‘wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though.'” And for these things, for the metaphor of the dead fish and how others respond, I thank her deeply.

I appreciate that “Hyperbole and a Half” is written and illustrated with wit and humor and an earnestness that does not shy away from the uncomfortable experiences of depression and the difficulty in expressing these to others (“uncomfortable” because in our society we really don’t deal well with depression).

This is a complex and multifaceted discussion that I’ve been wanting to explore. I’ve been unsure of an approach–I do not want a clinical discussion, or one bogged down in negativity or self-indulgence. Because though depressing or morbid, depression in its singularly unique manifestation is also humorous, or at least absurd. Absurd in the way that nihilism and existential terror are absurd. When you stare at the Abyss, and it stares back at you tenfold, what else is there but to laugh?

*I regret that I have no images of my own. Thanks to Allie Brosh for these images, and for inspiring me to attempt to draw a few of my own.*

I am not going to work today, folks. Why? Because we here in Madison, WI are in the midst of a blizzard – first of the season! About a foot of wet, heavy snow and more to come! I know it’s heavy as I’ve been occasionally shoveling so as not to break my back doing so all at once after all the snow has all fallen.

Needless to say driving is impossible, so I am not driving a cab today. Our metro buses have cancelled service as well. If a bus can’t drive in the street a Prius sure won’t be able to either. Just saying. Some people get upset that we can’t pick them up regardless of weather. The yellow color on the cab does not imbue it with special physics-busting powers. These are probably the same people that get upset that it takes longer to get to their destination during rush hour traffic. Again, the Prius is pretty awesome (average 45 mpg) but it does not come equipped with hovering ability, so waiting in traffic like all the other non-yellow cars is just how it is.

Sorry about the work-related rant. Thanks for indulging me.

Here are some pretty snow pictures I took last night and some I took an hour ago. Enjoy!

Not that one could tell from my blog activity, but I am indeed still among the living.

A friend took me to get some life energy: a hot house full of orchids, humidity, and warmth! It was amazing and, yes, warm – they have a coat rack just after you walk in. I thought that was so smart.

My friend and I will be going back in February when all the plants should be in full bloom. It was still gorgeous. All that green!

My favorite orchids are the tiny wee ones that grow on a bit of bark, with some moss tied on to hold it all together. These really are tiny! Here’s a wall of them hanging on their little shakes of wood and a closeup of one in bloom.Look at them all, blooming away like that’s what they do. Of course it is what they do. Some of what they do. The flower is no more the orchid than is the root – a paraphrase (I believe I’d read this originally referring to lilies, not orchids, but when in an orchid nursery…) Regardless, they bare their gorgeous sexy bits for the enjoyment of all. They do a good job of it, too. Despite my energy and mental clarity lows, I smiled and enjoyed myself and had a good time with my friend. Nothing like a walk through an orchid hot house in December (in the Northern hemisphere) to help lift the spirits.

Today I had a great day thanks to two young ladies I’d never met before. Most of my fares are people I don’t know or recognize, some are regulars and we get to know each other a bit, while some passengers I recognize from having driven them once or twice before. At any rate, these two girls (grade-school-aged) got into my cab and we had a great conversation. They inspired me. What a wonderful gift. Two complete strangers through their own energy and interest in the world inspired me. They were bright and lively and I could not help but feel similarly.

We talked about books! I asked what books they were reading or had recently read that they’d recommend to me: “Harriet Tubman: A Woman of Courage” and “Matched” by Ally Condie (actually, I saw an advance copy of “Matched” at Wiscon and was about to buy it before I restrained myself by reasoning that I already have so many unread books lining my shelves, and it’s good to support one’s local library by checking out material). And here was a young woman reading that book, recommending it. How cool is that? And Harriet Tubman. She undertook so much and risked so much despite the odds against her and an entire legal system and culture that stood in her way (raged, really). “‘The Moses of her People’ is the name given to this woman of great courage. Rewards of as high as $40,000 were offered for her capture” (Bucknell University)(and hey, that’s still a lot of money, even today). It’s good to hear that kids are still reading (in general) and reading about amazing women.

And both girls talked with me about writing. They encouraged me to keep writing. (!) I was hoping to encourage them to go after their dreams. And perhaps I did that as well. I don’t know. I hope so. I do know that they encouraged me and that is pretty cool.

NaNoWriMo is coming up. I was contemplating where or not I’d participate this year. Part of me wants to and another part wants to focus on short stories (revision in particular). The girls wanted me to include them in a novel and even came up with a title. I’ve decided I can do both, the short story revision will be slower if I write the NaNoWriMo novel, true, but I’ll get that jump on the sci-fi story I feel I should have written (reading Octavia E. Butler I’m wondering why I haven’t already, I see so much of what I want to write shimmering through her work).

Inspiration comes from many places, many of them unanticipated.

I came up with the following phrase while biking to work this morning – perhaps I knew?You are richer than you imagine – you with your life in your heart and your hands.

Oh ho ho… have had neither time nor mental space to write lately (not the entirety of my silence, dear reader, it is true, these last two weeks were especially ridiculous however). That thing I mentioned in my April 23rd blog, it is happening. It is happening and it is taking most of my time and energy, both physical and mental. It involves more bureaucracy than you can shake a tree at. And in one week from today, we’ll be moving into it!

But I have also realized, again (life’s lessons we just keep coming back to – as life evolves so does what we’ve learned, or we need to re-learn), that I must write. I’ve started this blog, and though it is not necessarily what I think it should be, both style and content, it is here and it is what I’m doing (and if I waited until I’d perfected the plan I’d never have started blogging). And I can’t get better at blogging or at making this blog what it could be if I don’t start somewhere. Kind of like writing, ainit? Funny that.

Therefore, dear reader, I am renewing my pledge to develop this blog and my writing for it. I give myself permission to make mistakes – if I have your permission to stumble and keep trying, I shall do so. Well, if I have your permission to you can keep reading, and if I don’t then you’ll have to stop.

Included in this renewal is a renewed focus on reading (I’ve been the most scattered reader this last year or two…. really, just ridiculous), so that I can write about what I’ve read and you can share your thoughts as well and won’t that be great! I’m currently struggling through (and enjoying! don’t get me wrong) Moonwise by Greer Gilman and have joined a Greer Gilman discussion group on Goodreads (which I will link to later as time is running short and I must off to work – but I’m writing a new post, like I said I would, even if I don’t have the time to perfect them (and link added!)). If you like a challenge, enjoy language and its textures, if you steep yourself in myth and legends and fantasize your own or used to when you were a kid (it’s like riding a bike (I was about to type “dolphin” for “bike,” not sure why), try Moonwise. Gorgeous. I have never before not understood words and enjoyed it this much.

So, today I have renewed my pledge to write you regularly and to focus on reading so that we may discuss those wonderful, magical, powerful objects we call books.

I’ll do what I can this week… not much, but I’ll keep you updated… I’ve got to buy and move into a house, after all. Maybe some Arrietty live there. Or gnomes. Or fairies. Maybe a portal into another world is tucked beneath a dormer… I’ll let you know.

Here is a wonderful article that rang true, hit home, and other turns of phrases having to do with alarms clanging, whistles blowing, and body getting shocked into attention: Women with Clean Houses Don’t Write Epic Novels by Lynda Williams on the Clarion Writers’ Workshop Blog. Catherynne Valente had a blog entry (no longer up) along these lines as well: regardless of how many novels she’d authored, the house could be filled with piles of books her name embossed on the covers winking in the light, if someone walked into her home and its cleanliness didn’t live up to expectations, that person would think her lazy or not a good woman/wife, though they’d not have blinked an eye at the man of the house. (And yes, I know I’m using the plural pronoun with the singular noun “person,” but there just isn’t a good gender neutral singular to use, so I will be resorting to this method, dear reader. I know my grammar well enough to know I’m breaking the rules, and I’m going to break them.)

One reason, dear reader, that I have not posted lately, is that I have been ill. Another reason is that I had been working furiously to revise a couple short stories and write an essay for the Clarion and Clarion West Writers’ Workshops. And all other work piled up around me: a mess in so many ways.

But even before these events occurred, I realized that I was not going to get as much writing done if I kept cleaning the apartment as much as I felt I needed to. And I was already cleaning it less than I had been brought up to. Which believe me is a significant amount of cleaning – if you know anything about Bavarian housewives, you know they keep a clean, tidy, and beautiful house. I had to get over that ingrained desire/need/social expectation. And yes, that was work – it was work to work less at cleaning. I had to get over the feeling that I was a failure because I didn’t keep a tidy home.

My time investment for household chores is often compounded by my lack of motor vehicle. I sold my truck when I became a laid-off carpenter and never bought another. I bike or walk to most locations. That means it takes more time and more physical energy to accomplish chores such as grocery shopping. There’s an awesome article in “bitch” magazine by Elly Blue: “Gender Rolls: The challenges of sharing the road with boys.” She has info related to the gender gap in cycling on her site takingthelane.com.

This is interesting stuff and certainly related to why I and other women writers who do not live alone do more of the cleaning than our partners. My partner is a wonderful cook, and he loves to create foods for me to eat (and he does other household chores, but no one is as clean as a woman instilled with the tradition of Bavarian housekeeping, certainly not a guy from the U.S.). We both enjoy sitting down together to share our meals. But cooking is the most fun and least icky of household chores. It’s great that men are helping with the cooking, but it isn’t the same as helping with the cleaning. Cleaning is the dirty, boring, tough part of housework. Compare delicious fun and creative cooking to icky not fun and not creative toilet cleaning. See the difference?

When I read the article by Lynda Williams on Clarion’s blog I yawped for joy, for the relief of validation. I want to print it out and tack it to the front door. And yet, I want a clean home too. I really do. I think better in a clean environment, I feel better when I’m not surrounded by clutter and crumbs and dirty dishes. Striking that happy medium is where it must be at. And I need better shelves! If I had more appropriate shelving for my many books and papers it would be so much more orderly in my writing room. I envision a desk without piles of papers threatening to avalanche and drown me.

Of course this photo is of a significantly larger room than I have… ah, the space to store all my books and let my mind unfurl. That’s my dream: an open, light-filled space with good storage for books and papers and art supplies. It wouldn’t take too much to clean 🙂

Where do you like to write, or draw, or create, think? Is it cozy or open and airy, filled with textures and colors or neutral?

It has been much too long since I’ve posted. The holidays are already upon us and the new year is imminent. This then is a post to wish you a happy Winter and whichever Holiday or none it is you celebrate or don’t. I like to wish people a happy Solstice, because even if it is not a phenomenon they think about in celestial and cosmological terms, it affects them and their lives. The return of Light – something we can all appreciate and enjoy.

It has been difficult for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year: Madison is unseasonably warm (and no, I’m not complaining) and the trees and ground are not covered in a blanket of sparkling snow. The streets are not even covered in dirty gray snow and sludge. Thus, I kept feeling like I had weeks before Christmas arrived. I was wrong.

A friend mentioned that it feels like we are in borrowed time, a borrowed November. I do not know whose November nor whether or not they miss it and want it back.

The solstice was only a few days ago, so really it is only winter just now. Anyone who knows Wisconsin, however, will let you know that it’s winter once we’ve put the jack-o-lanterns in the compost and the Halloween candy’s been eaten up. Two seasons comprise 75% of the year and two share the remaining 25%. If you know anything about Wisconsin you know that Spring and Autumn are all too brief; you can miss them if you for some reason don’t venture out of doors for a spell, such as if you have a nasty illness or a project that you must focus on and finish. Shut your eyes for a little too long and you’ll be lucky to see the tail end of Autumn as Winter comes barreling in. And yes, Winter comprises the majority of that 75%.

My goal for 2012 is to revise Daughters of the Spirits, my 2011 NaNoWriMo novel, and begin At the Table with Kings, the SciFi novel that’s been in my head and somewhat on paper, the one that was my first choice for NaNoWriMo but that I shied away from. Well, I shan’t shy away anymore.

Which is a resolution of mine, as a writer: I have resolved to write the stories that present themselves to me, the stories that swirl and crawl there way up my throat and into my mouth and into my fingers, the ones that have struggled through my insides and other untold spaces. They have worked so hard to present themselves, how can I deny them life? Who am I to say, ‘no you’re not publishable, look at you, what sort of a plot arc is that? How am I going to package this so someone will want to print you?’ I shall never tell a story, “stories don’t look like that.”

How often have I heard, as example, that how I acted or looked was unfeminine, when everything I do, by definition is feminine. What those people meant to admonish me with, is that what I did or looked like was culturally unfeminine… traditionally unfeminine wouldn’t have worked, because there are so many traditions and have been so many more traditions that such a statement is quite useless. Of course the same can be said for culture… unfeminine according to current dominant culture, pop culture (you’ll enjoy the typo that I corrected: “poop” instead of “pop”) which is no static thing.

Stories have every right to exist as they are without the imposition of a culturally faux consumer-driven publishing market dictating the shape and scope of their existence. Which is to say: my creativity and my thoughts are legitimate and beautiful as they stand. The worlds I create have a place in the Universe and are not inherently less privileged than any other worlds.

I will reread Emerson, especially “Self-Reliance”:In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts… Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. … but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,–disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, and a newspaper directs.

This critique of society and the sway of popular culture still applies today. It also explains why “bad” novels sell so well. Thankfully, there still are presses interested in intelligent stories, and publishing houses that appreciate well-written work, creative work, works of art and genius.

Circuitously to say – my resolution is to be genius, that is, to write the stories that are within me and express myself wholly. To accept the divine idea only I can represent.

This is what happens: life gets in the way of living. Turns out I have a bronchial infection. No wonder I was so tired for a couple weeks, then the coughing, then the real tired with the owies and the coughing… and because why stop there, we have an infestation of pupating larvae of wool-eating moths. My wool! My lovely sweaters and knitting! Had – the exterminators came today. So I spent the whole day Sunday bent over in the attic vacuuming and getting everything the hell out of the upstairs. Did I mention it’s the bedroom? (That was not a pleasant way to wake up.) It will take me at least a week to wash EVERYTHING. Except the woolens, because they can’t be washed and dried (if you want them to maintain the same size they went in as). The wool needs to be frozen for 48 hours to kill the buggers. I do not have a freezer that large. So I will have to wait for the temperature to drop to below freezing for two days straight. Never have been so eager for it to freeze.

This weekend my mom celebrates her birthday – Happy Birthday Mama! And my friend and writing companion celebrates finishing/passing her prelims – Congratulations Sofia! So there is good news with the less than ideal news. (But I have no energy to bake cakes, that makes me sad.)

And, I’m done writing the the scenes that I had in my head, so the easy writing is completed. Now comes the work work part of the month. Yeah. Exactly why I signed up for this challenge: make the generative part of writing happen, force it, do it, push through regardless of the frustration and the uncertainty and the insecurity. The stuff that makes the writing good is, interestingly enough, the stuff that makes it difficult to write in the first place. Because the issues and emotions that are difficult but I’ve come to terms with, those aren’t the ones that motivate me, they aren’t the reason for the facial tick, for the tap tap tapping of feet or fingers drumming, or the reason the dishes really need to be done right this minute. No. The motivators are the issues I’m unsure how to approach or the ones that piss me off so much I don’t even know where to begin. Overload. But these are exactly the issues that need to be discussed, explored, written, felt, shared.

(tiny voice) But I don’t want to.

It doesn’t matter. Keep writing.

Does this look familiar? This is why art is vital to culture and to the human condition. Writing makes us human. Writing and reading. And I use writing in the most general sense: it includes any form of story-telling. Writing and reading make us more human. Better humans. They connect us to ourselves, to a larger whole. They allow us to grow and experience feelings and thoughts we might otherwise be unfamiliar with, or feel overwhelmed by, or disoriented or isolated…

Really writing and reading are not separate like the use of two distinct words might have you think. It’s not unlike breathing; breathing out is writing but you need to breathe in too, and that’s reading, and you need breathe more than just once, so you breathe out again and that’s reading, and you need to breathe in again and that’s writing… Breathe a lot my dear friends. Don’t stop.

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